This time of year, bushels of rhubarb, potatoes, and lettuce can be harvested in abundance at The People’s Pantry, a community garden that doubles as a fresh food pantry in Blackpool, England. There, residents living in adjacent affordable housing units tend to the fresh crops they grow and then eat. And lining the ground beneath each raised bed of soil is a smooth sheet of concrete, dotted with slivers of ivory shells.
“They’re not so obvious at first … but as you walk on it, the shells become more apparent as you go, and little flecks of white start coming out,” said Helen Jones, operations director at LeftCoast, which runs the local community garden. She’s describing the concrete mix made with crushed seashells that now serves as a sentry against floods for the garden, bolstering the space against stormwater runoff or heavy rains.
It wasn’t too long ago that frequent water inundation was a mainstay at The People’s Pantry. A regular day of rainfall would turn the garden’s corners into something like a marsh, morphing uneven ground into da... Read more
